Determination of Total Volatile Organic Compounds in Recycled Plastic by Headspace/Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

A method of headspace combination with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry was developed for the determination of total volatile organic compounds (TVOC) from recycled plastic. The factors such as equilibrium temperature, equilibrium time and sample uniformity were investigated. Toluene was selected as reference material. The results showed that the optimum conditions were as follows: equilibrium temperature was 80°Cand equilibrium time was 25min. The calibration curves showed good linearity and the correlative coefficients was 0.9975. The method detection limit(S/N=3) was 0.01mg/kg, and the recoveries ranged from 83.5% to 108.3%, with RSDs <6%. The method has the advantages of no pretreatment, accurate results and high sensitivity etc., and can be used for the determination of TVOC from recycled plastic.